Sitting at work, sitting at work... what to do? Hey, why don't I pass the time by making yet another BPAL post? That sounds like a great idea.
Today I decided to re-use a couple scents. The first was Grog, which is delicious in the way that only butterscotch can be, but sadly fades to baby powder on me after an hour or so. Totally worth having, though, even if I'm incompatible with it.
The second is Smokestack, which I mentioned earlier. It's one of the first ones I tried, and though the scent is hard to place, and while it's not really a particularly great or terrible smell, I find myself strangely drawn to it. Trying it again.
The official description is "Creosote, coal, and industrial waste." Originally, I wasn't sure what creosote was, so I looked it up... apparently it's the stuff you smell in tar fumes (I am slightly disappointed that it does not have anything to do with robot ninjas). And I guess it's also a prime element of liquid smoke, although that's not the same as tar fumes... those are wood fumes, which are more pleasant to think about consuming. Not necessarily healthy, but oh well. There's also creosote from burning oil, coal, and other things, so at this point I'm guessing that creosote is probably best described as "smoke fumes." In this case, they're probably going specifically for coal-based smoke fumes.
One other little issue of personal ignorance: come to think of it, what does coal smell like, anyway? I know I've grown up in a sheltered world if I can not know the smell of coal. I know what it looks like, of course, and that's it's made from the carbon of dead plants and such. I have a mental concept of "coal." But what I really think of is "charcoal briquettes," which are, as I understand, actually more of a wood product, and smell delicious. Actual coal can't possibly smell that way, because then Industrial-Era English cities would have smelled like a barbecue every day, and who would ever want to change that? Pollution is a small price to pay for an everlasting, industrial-size barbecue.
Putting it all together in a genius spree of stating-the-obvious, Smokestack is supposed to smell like industrial smoke! Or at least like factory-polluted air. So how close does it get?
When I opened the vial, the smell was not easy to place. Nor did my observations seem at all reasonable coming from the olfactory sense. But the words which came to me from smelling the open bottle were "thick," "warm," "muggy," and "chemical." In this case, "chemical" was mentally associated with toxicity. As for the first three words... I'm tempted to think that I did, in fact, feel them with my nose rather than smell them, but the oil should not have been noticeably thicker, warmer, or moister than the others, and yet this is the only one which really brought all those thoughts to mind together. Very possible that it's just a mental connection with the word "Smokestack," but I think it's at least as likely that the scent was named that because of these sensations.
I put two coats on my arm. Smelling it as it started to dry on my skin completed the scent. I think my skin works well for the "harsher" fragrances, or at least it seems to add some sort of chemical mixture which complements them well. There were two different scents I could really sense. The weaker of them was, I think, the "creosote" scent. I could best describe it as the lingering odor on someone who has smoked a cigar. It wasn't overpowering, but the hints were strong enough to be noticed.
The second scent was really more of a personal memory. It smelled like a certain vent back at college. Sometimes as I was walking back to my dorm in the morning, I would pass through a vent blowing thick, white, opaque steam across the sidewalk. As I passed through it, it would always be warm and moist, and it would smell of chemicals... detergent-like chemicals. It was kind of "fresh" smelling, but at the same time it felt toxic. And this scent was exactly like walking through that.
As it ages, it seems that the "creosote" part dies away, leaving a mostly pleasant scent behind. Although I still think of it as kind of toxic. Strange. It lasts, as with most, about 4 hours on me before becoming very faint.
Overall, while it's not a great, healthy-smelling scent, it's one I like. Good atmospheric scent... a dense, polluted steam. Not what most people would go for, but one I'm fond of.
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